I spent the day playing with my buns - and chatting with a friend on the phone. Here are the buns with their wool harvested in the bag beside them

Hazel

Pistachio
I chatted with my friend for 5 hours. !
Yes, I do have a proclivity for chatting on the phone. I have not done such a thing for a very long time, but, every time I had a good friend and her character allowed for such a thing- I was always in. My elementary school friend and I called one another and chatted for hours. Same with different high school and college friends. It has been such a long time since I shared such simple intimacy with a kind and loving soul.
We spoke of so many things. I feel so very lucky that she is so open and insightful about topics that I have wrestled with for a long time. Like my kids having no grandparents or any family to interact with. Part of me- quite a large part- years desperately for that group of loving people surrounding them. Loving being the qualifier which is conspicuously absent in our unfortunate circumstances. And still I wonder if my children are up for the challenge of their grandparents, or if they are with me because they knew I would not allow them to be needlessly traumatized by unapologetic abusers.
It’s a sticky question.
I feel trapped in the millennial trope of divorcing ones parents. And yet, I never think it’s the child that divorces a parent.... I myself never did. It became so unbearable to be fake around them- to be required to fawn and to feed their narcissistic egoic need for admiration and praise was stifling of my own expression and needs. When I expressed my simple desire to have my needs - which may be annoying or inconvenient for them- they flipped to vicious punishing rejection. Something that, if experienced by a small child, is quite traumatic and destabilizing for the personality. I can attest.
How could I allow my child to to be affected in that way?
Especially knowing just how much the space has benefitted me over that last few years. I think that I am a much better mother than I was even a year ago. Certainty, gobs better than the mom I was a few years ago. If I am still getting better, what right would I have to jeopardize those gains for my kids? I want them to have the best parenting possible. Perhaps they did choose me for a simple ability and willingness to be objective enough to have measurable standards. They matter to me at least that much. And my own trustworthiness matters to me.

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